Hard West 2 - Hard Case...

Why do players love turn-based strategies? First of all, for the immersive gameplay: all the time you have to think about moves, invent or reproduce builds. Secondly, it is one of the most unhurried genres where only knowledge of mechanics, experience and the ability to think three steps ahead is decisive. In those moments when you manage to implement a newly invented chip feel like a clever fellow. Third - turn-based strategies often cleverly balances between challange and recreation.

Why do players not like turn-based strategies? The first thing that comes to mind is the mocking probability system: you will hit the enemy with a 75% probability... Well, I mean, you miss, that's a shame. One gamer in Darkest Dungeon once attacked a boss and got three critical hits in a row, even though the probability of that happening is less than 1%. Characters in Darkest Dungeon are mortal, in the best roguelike tradition, there are no revivals in the game. That gamer lost in a battle with a cheating boss all the characters he had spent thirteen hours of real time pumping. Simply because of bad luck.

Secondly - turn-based strategy gameplay sometimes starts to stifle, neither accelerated moves, nor removal of animations helps. And thirdly - the balance of tactical strategies sometimes can be broken, find a good combination, press a button and win. Pressing the same button from time to time is boring...

CreativeForge Games released the original Hard West in 2015. It was a turn-based strategy game set in the mystical Wild West, a setting that had not yet been exhausted at the time. Hard West 2 was already being developed by Ice Code Games, the debut of Hard West 2, and...

...with respect to Hard West 2, the saying comes to mind: "If you can't do it, don't do it"... Hard West 2 managed to combine everything that in turn-based tactics infuriates, and bypass almost all the charms of the genre.

Native error

Google does not have this term; it was invented by the author of the article. A native error is a case when an employee performs his or her work blindly, mechanically, without any deep understanding of the subject. Native mistakes are often made by programmers with little experience. However, criticizing such a programmer sometimes turns out to be a difficult task; he/she will not even understand the essence of the remarks. The code works - everything is ok. And you can't really get it wrong. If you tell such a programmer that his code is slow, he will just shrug his shoulders in response. That is exactly what happened in Hard West 2. But we'll come to these conclusions later...

The story campaign begins with a scene of a bloody train robbery. The Wild West is full of rumors and legends, one of them being the tale of a mysterious train running along the tracks in the night. The train attracts adventurers for profit. They say that if you rob this train, you will become fabulously rich. However, the locals say that the train is controlled by dark forces that do not confuse lovers of easy money. For one of these lovers of freebies and the player will play - for Gene Carter and his partners.

Jack and his partners manage to get on the train on the move. But as soon as the robbers take out the guards, the train enters a tunnel that didn't exist before the robbery began. A completely different train comes out of the tunnel. The robbers realised that the rumours were true: an evil creature was lurking in the carriages and the train was moving on centipede-like paws. It turns out that the train is controlled by a certain Mamona - either a demon or a genie.

Jack, apparently not a very bright man, suggests that Mammon play cards. The stakes are high: if Jack wins he gets the train, if Jack loses he gives up his soul and the souls of his partners. Jack was not confused by the fact that Mammon told him directly that he is the Devil...

Of course, Jack loses. The entire story campaign will be devoted to revenge. After recovering from a botched heist, Jack and his partners note an inner emptiness. It's funny that Jack's stupid decision caused his friends to lose their souls, but no conflict ensues from that. The adventurers note the internal changes and discuss what happened as if they didn't pass their university entrance exams, nothing more...

But don't be too picky about the plot...because the plot looks good against the other aspects of the game. And to berate Ice Code Games for losing the spirit of the original is like berating a programmer for slow code. It is noticeable that Ice Code Games tried to breathe life into Hard West 2. They have called in Kevin Conroy himself to voice one of the characters, the canonical voice of Batman.

...All the visuals and audio design were done on a good level. Ice Code Games worked with the Unity engine and managed to squeeze the juice out of it.

The Empty Wild West

The entire gameplay is divided into session-based, turn-based battles and world exploration. On the global map, our heroes move at a gallop:

The map has activities, main quest and side quests, as well as random events. No points are spent for moving, so you can explore the map up and down without fear of getting lost. During the campaign, heroes can camp and have a campfire and talk to each other - hello, Darkest Dungeon!

Only in Darkest Dungeon was the resting mechanic used during particularly long hikes and had a lot of nuances: during the rest, the characters healed, joked, ate and slept - you had to choose the most profitable leisure time. In addition, one of the characters was tormented by tangible nightmares, in which he plunged his partners. In Hard West 2 there is nothing of the sort - the usual halting and mindless chatter.

The side quests are classic. "Go kill," "Go fetch," "Fetch this, serve that, go for a walk, don't get in the way." The lazy approach is visible to the naked eye. The main tasks were more successful, but it is better to evaluate them. The main quests succeeded only because of the unusual victory conditions.

Random activities - this is a kind of old-school RPG meme. There was a disease in old RPGs where the developer wanted to put the player in front of a moral choice, but didn't consider the fact that doing the honorable thing would prove extremely disadvantageous.

"You meet an old man on the road, he asks for water. What will you do? [Give up your last sip of water] - get +1 to karma / [Dry the flask in front of the thirsty old man and then stab him] - get the Staff of the Elder by +25 to all characteristics. Of course, players always chose the second one...

In Hard West 2, the moral choice system suffers from the same disease. Here Ice Code Games tried to copy the relationship mechanic from Darkest Dungeon II: during the journey, each team member manifested opinions on how to do the right thing, and the player chose who to listen to and who not to. In Darkest Dungeon II, this mechanic worked better, for it added another variable to the gameplay. You couldn't just max out a character's morale and forget about it. In Hard West 2 the mechanics are different: the player controls 6 characters, each with a reputation scale. You can't upgrade the characters, their abilities are revealed as the friendship grows stronger. However, you cannot sow discord between the characters - they will not panic, blame each other, etc., but only mutter under their breath...

Step-by-step - yes, tactics - no.

But the aforementioned flaws don't compare to the local combat system. There were flowers, now there will be berries.

The in-game inventory is poor in both breadth and depth. The game has only a couple of weapons with no obvious accents. From mission to mission the player will buy the same guns, but with different characteristics. The style of play is predetermined by the character, and their active abilities do not change. Walking, punching, ordering to duck, and ultimatum abilities are all static. Variety is introduced only by active items, but even there is not much to choose from. Any builds, unusual combinations are out of the question. The player has already decided exactly how he should go through the game.

The Luck mechanic is also controversial. Whenever a protagonist takes damage or misses, the player receives Luck points. Luck is spent on more accurate shots, critical hits - everything where luck is needed. It seems to make sense, but luck is calculated at the beginning of the turn, which makes it impossible to pump luck to the maximum and forget about misses at 96% of the target.

But what the developers have not forgotten - the penalty for safecasting. It is impossible to save and load forever for a lucky coincidence. As has been said, the moves are calculated at the beginning, and all the player does is "flip the thimble" when "the ball has long been up his sleeve. And the system, it seemed, was supposed to add a challange to the game, but sometimes at the beginning of a turn the logic of the game requires the opponent to have a critical hit, which will kill one of the team members. As fate would have it, if the opponent kills one of the heroes, permanent defeat.

Conclusions

As you become familiar with Hard West 2, it soon becomes clear that the game was made without the ultimate vision. Many of the mechanics are borrowed, but their principles and usefulness are not. Many simply don't work, and Hard West 2 itself is game-mechanically very poor.